I popped in to my favourite chicken place in The Passage and was saddened to see they now charge a 50 cent fee for the pleasure of using my debit card to pay for my artery-clogging vice. To all the stores out there that think they are right to recoup their costs for the debit machine, I just want to say, “You are fucking retarded.”
Some retailers complain that they need to recoup their cost but you can cram that. It costs the retailer about 7 cents a transaction. See how your sales drop when you don’t offer debit. Suck up the small cost and increase your total sales. Sounds like Economics 101 to me.
morons…
—Nickel and Dimed To Death
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.
I so look forward to a day when banks do NOT profit off every single transaction everywhere. I hope banks continue to screw the small businessman with automated “solutions” while upping the prices of fewer bodies required to provide said solution. In other words, the technology reduces the bank’s operating costs yet the bank’s rates have NEVER dropped, at least not in my lifetime. Keep raising the price so ma and pa can deal in cash and so can you. Plastic doesn’t make the world go round.
What really gets me are people who use debit for lunch – their bill is less than $5 but they don’t mind paying a fucking service charge of 35, 50 cents. I’ve seen the same people do this day after day, week after week at the restaurant in our building. Even at 35 cents, that’s like $7.00 a month (35 cents x 20 work days)they’re throwing away. Fuck, people are stupid.
This might be against Interac’s terms of service. You may want to look into that OP as there aren’t a lot of places to get cash in the Passage.
I was in Holland this summer, they charge 50 euro cents for the little packs of ketchup…they were 13 mml
Not against the terms of service.
You aren’t paying to use Interac, rather you are paying to use that terminal.
Stupid, but they have every right to charge it, and I have every right not to eat there.
Start an account with PC Financial. It will cost you NOTHING to withdraw the money from one of THEIR ATMs, at any time, to pay for your greasy vice.
greasy vice? Chickens everywhere think you suck, McNasty.
7 cents as the store’s cost? Maybe for a big chain like Sobeys or Superstore who can cut a deal with the bank or debit/cc terminal provider but thats the not the case with many smaller mom & pop type of businesses.
I can tell you that one Dartmouth-based terminal provider charges as little as 35cents to their best customers but the average is a bit higher. Then add a nightly settlement fee, commercial bank deposit fees and the risk of chargeback costs and you’ll quickly understand why some charge enough to make sure they cover themselves financially for when the invoice comes in from their provider.
I can understand why some are recouping their interact/cc costs and certainly understand why many businesses are making it less costly and more convenient to use cash again.
So many places here don’t accept debit. It makes be want to rip my eyeballs out, especially when it’s an emergency coffee. Emergency coffees are the most important kind of coffees.
Learn to carry cash around and you’ll have nothing to bitch about. Your spare change adds up better than bank service charges.
Use your credit card and avoid fees entirely as long as you just keep paying it off.
Carry cash. It’s a great invention. I’d like to clarify that it’s not the bank charging you this fee, it’s most likely the fee that the business is charged when they use the terminal by the service provider (i.e.: GlobalPayments, Moneris) who is using the Interac system. The business in question is probably seeing a influx of low purchase price (or low profit) sales that people use debit for (usually transactions less than 5 bucks) which offsets the profit made by said business. So, the business adds the fee, hoping people are stupid enough to pay it (yes, they are) and they are in a win-win situation. They weed out those shitty sales that are being paid by debit, thereby cutting costs and adding to the bottom line.
Kay— shut your pie-hole. Banks charge fees to help them with the administrative costs of taking on the businesses as clients in the first place. Do you know how much a small business needs as start up capital? It’s usually lent to the proprietor in the form of a loan then things like letters of credit, emergency loans, etc. All of which these fees offset. Same goes for personal clients. Want to know why our baking system didn’t fail? Because our banking system was properly capitalized. We can thank those fees for that. Much like gas in places like Japan and most of Europe, we were just paying the proper price for the product. Learn about the system before you go off on a tirade. It’s not a conspiracy to restrict your freedom.
This is one of the reasons why I love being a student — cheap ass banking charges. A certain “provincial” bank charges me like $1.25 or something a month for all my banking. I use my debit a lot because I hate carrying cash (I lost my wallet once with cash in it, so I’m weary about carrying large sums of cash), and even with my usage it never exceeds my alloted debits included in my plan…plus i get unlimited full service transactions.
Last year I forgot to bring in my student ID to update my account and it rolled over into a regular powerchequing account and the fee for all my banking was something like $40 bucks…so I’m saving $38.75 at least/month just by being a student 🙂
Cheap ass banking charges ! Are you kidding me ?
THere’s a Grocery store in town that offers free banking.
Free personalised checks, no charge banking. a debit card that works in their system & is backed by one of our National banks where you can deposit or withdraw for free.
Manage ,transfer, or bill payments all free.
Plus it pays interest, actual interest monthly !
More is right. Pc bank is awesome. Not only do they not charge you to withdrawl money from their bank but pc doesn’t charge you to withdrawl from any bank. The only charge you’ll get at bank machines is the one from the machine. The biggest downside with pc is that there is no tellers. If you use tellers a lot then pc is not for you. Otherwise its an awesome bank!
kay – “greasy vice? Chickens everywhere think you suck, McNasty.”
Ah, Kay. Didn’t realize you had a special talent for communicating with chickens.
I suppose that would make you special. You’ll have to teach it to us some day so we can all be special, too.
I was merely reiterating “artery-clogging vice” but differently.
I love my bank, I love my bank shares and my dividends. I love getting free banking.
I love the nice profits they make. I love the security of knowing my bank will open 6 days a week. I love knowing my bank won’t fail.
Canadian banks are #1.
The rest are crap.
Fever, you must have just fallen off the boat… shut my what? Why? Conspiracy? Who said that? You do the math here. It’s an AUTOMATED solution just like ATM’s are. There is only slight IT maintenance and zero manual processes involved on the bank’s side of the technology and you’re going on about sourcing cash to extend loans. I wonder what the banks did for cash BEFORE computers did their jobs for them and eliminated so many client-facing positions? And have you seen what banks charge businesses for their oh-so-special needs? They charge for deposit, they charge for withdrawal, they charge for each cheque and they really screw you when they have to send out a piece of mail. Imagine paying per-sale fees on top of all that! If you think the BILLIONS of dollars in yearly profits (that’s AFTER expenses) doesn’t come from the bank getting in on almost every single transaction in the country just in this way think again. They screwed you before Interac and now that they do less work and require less man-power they screw you even harder. If you can’t see that I’d suggest accounting-101 or even economics-101 in your future. Your comment, “learn about the system before”… I program their legacy systems, fuckwad, so who’s talking out of their ASS again, Fever?
For the rest of you touting the virtues of PC no-fee baking just where do you stash your will or assign Power of Attorney? It’s a “virtual” bank, all right. Perfect for idiot students without manageable assets who prefer to deal with call centre employees.
I’ll just throw it out there… Canadian banks survived this recession because they were properly capitalized, yes. But I’d also argue to say with or without so many different revenue streams for the bank’s BILLIONS in yearly profits CANADIAN LAW ensured banks remained properly capitalized, not your fucking bank card and NOT merchant fees. Fever, you’re an idiot… if even one iota of what you think about a bank’s profits were true then not one of them would have failed during a tough economy.
Kay, you don’t need to do all your banking with a particular bank to use their safe deposit boxes. Also, you could keep a copy of your will with your lawyer. Also, how is no-fee banking a solution for idiots? Wouldn’t the idiots be those who keep paying service fees and bitching about it when a solution to their problem exists?
To know what a true profit is, you have to do it by what an individual share is worth. Yes a company or bank may have made millions or billions but if a share was worth $20 at the beginning of the year and say worth $22 at the end, then the profit is only 10%, which is about a normal blue chip stock return.
$13 billion PROFIT is $13 billion PROFIT no matter how you slice it up. To expect ANY kind of return during recessionary times, when INDUSTRY is failing, when banks are failing, when insurance companies are failing, when entire countries go bankrupt, is to expect to continue to screw the little guy while it all goes down and this is exactly how it’s done. Like I said, I don’t mind if the banks continue to screw ma and pa so ma and pa put banks back in their place by ELIMINATING that revenue stream and processing cash, cash and only cash.
And a large pizza is a large pizza, until you have to feed 20 people with it. You should go back to school and learn a little math.
Oh BTW exactly how much profit is ok $1.00, $10.00 maybe even $100.00. C’mon all-knowing kay, how much profit is a company allowed to make?
well, it’s not so much about how much a company makes, but how they make it. I think it’s reasonable to question unreasonable fees.